Page 19 - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture an Introduction

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Ideology 3

A second definition suggests a certain masking, distortion, or concealment. Ideology
is used here to indicate how some texts and practices present distorted images of real-
ity. They produce what is sometimes called ‘false consciousness’. Such distortions, it is
argued, work in the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless.
Using this definition, we might speak of capitalist ideology. What would be intimated
by this usage would be the way in which ideology conceals the reality of domination
from those in power: the dominant class do not see themselves as exploiters or oppres-
sors. And, perhaps more importantly, the way in which ideology conceals the reality of
subordination from those who are powerless: the subordinate classes do not see them-
selves as oppressed or exploited. This definition derives from certain assumptions
about the circumstances of the production of texts and practices. It is argued that they
are the superstructural ‘reflections’ or ‘expressions’ of the power relations of the eco-
nomic base of society. This is one of the fundamental assumptions of classical
Marxism. Here is Karl Marx’s (1976a) famous formulation:

In the social production of their existence men enter into definite, necessary rela-
tions, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corres-
ponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstruc-
ture and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The
mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual
life process in general (3).

What Marx is suggesting is that the way a society organizes the means of its eco-
nomic production will have a determining effect on the type of culture that society pro-
duces or makes possible. The cultural products of this so-called base/superstructure
relationship are deemed ideological to the extent that, as a result of this relationship,
they implicitly or explicitly support the interests of dominant groups who, socially,
politically, economically and culturally, benefit from this particular economic organiza-
tion of society. In Chapter 4, we will consider the modifications made by Marx and
Frederick Engels themselves to this formulation, and the way in which subsequent
Marxists have further modified what has come to be regarded by many cultural critics
as a rather mechanistic account of what we might call the social relations of culture and
popular culture. However, having said this, it is nevertheless the case that

acceptance of the contention that the flow of causal traffic within society is
unequally structured, such that the economy, in a privileged way, influences polit-
ical and ideological relationships in ways that are not true in reverse, has usually
been held to constitute a ‘limit position’ for Marxism. Abandon this claim, it is
argued, and Marxism ceases to be Marxism (Bennett, 1982a: 81).

We can also use ideology in this general sense to refer to power relations outside
those of class. For instance, feminists speak of the power of patriarchal ideology, and